Now that I'm reasonably happy with managing my calendar with a combination of virtual assistance and tools like TimeBridge, I'd like to improve my talk management system. I give lots of talks, and I'd love to scale up to do even more, and to do them even more effectively.

Role models are hugely important. Think about all the people you've heard speak, and then think of the ones you admired and who made an impact on you. Perhaps you had a particularly charismatic teacher. Maybe you've gone out of your way to find sources of inspiration, you'll probably find it difficult to name more than a few. Religious evangelists and personal development speakers may have well-developed speaking skills, but it's hard to think of how to translate those skills to the business or technical presentations you need to make.

If you don't know what a great speech sounds like and feels like, you'll find it difficult to improve your skills and to help others improve theirs.

If you don't know what a great speech is like, you may be able to polish the mechanics of your delivery, but you'll miss out on deeper opportunities to improve your public speaking. You can give a good speech without ums and ahs, with vocal variety and body language, and with good eye contact. A great speech, however, shows you how all those things fit together with great content, great organization, and all the other factors that make a speech extraordinary.

If you don't know what a great speech is like, you'll be able to offer only surface suggestions to other people interested in improving their public speaking skills. You can help them eliminate the ums and ahs, encourage them to speak more slowly or quickly, and help them explore vocal variety. But you'll find it difficult to recognize their key strengths and help them imagine how they could do it even better, and you'll find it difficult to make specific suggestions that can help them transform the way they communicate.

Why limit yourself to that, when you can find tons of inspiring speeches on the Net?

The key resource I recommend to people who are interested in improving their speaking skills is the Technology, Entertainment and Design conference, which shares speeches from some of the most accomplished people in the world.

You can also check YouTube and other sources for comedians, poets, politicians, and other people who make a living--and make a difference--with the spoken word.

Go find yourself a few role models, and see what a difference it can make. =)

If you ever find yourself in any of my face-to-face presentations, please feel free to bring out your computer, your phone, or whatever else you use. It's okay. In fact, it's more than okay. I love it.

Some people--particularly presenters--hate it when others have their laptops open and are typing away. They feel it's disrespectful and distracting.

Me? I love it when people have their laptops or phones open. Go ahead. Liveblog. Chat on the backchannel. Look up stuff I mention. Write things down on your TODO list. Doodle if you want to.

And yes, if there's something else on your mind that you're worrying about--a report that's due, an emergency that just came up--by all means go ahead and work on it, because even if I instituted a no-laptops-or-phones-open policy, you'd still be thinking about it anyway. Better that I'm there in the background for you to catch an interesting snippet and look up (thanks to the cocktail party effect), than for you to resent me for taking up valuable time and making it difficult for you to edge out of the door in a graceful manner. (Because you sat up front, right? Best seats in the house.)

And if I can't keep you interested enough so that you don't get distracted by mail or I Can Has Cheezburger, then that's my own fault. ;)

I'm not afraid of the backchannel--the online conversations that go on behind the scenes, a scaled-up version of passing notes and whispering in the crowd. If you're talking about the ideas that I'm presenting, fantastic! I've engaged you in a much better way than I could ever have if you just sat there passively listening. If you're looking up examples I've quoted and bookmarking them for later reading, hooray! I've said something that's sparked your interest, and you'll take it from there. If you're asking or answering questions about what I'm saying, wow! You jumpstart the discussion and save other people from being confused. If you're liveblogging what I'm talking about, you help even more people learn from it, and you give me even more results on the time and effort I invested in preparing the presentation.

I wish all of my talks had backchannels! One of the things I love about giving virtual presentations is that I can open up a backchannel where everyone--even the non-Tweeters--can chat about what we're talking about, and that conversation is easy to watch while I'm giving the presentation. That means that I can see what people are picking up on, what people are curious or confused about, what questions people have--without interrupting my flow or introducing too many awkward pauses for questions. I've seen people provide further examples and answer each other's questions, and that helps me learn even more while I'm giving the presentation.

What I love about the backchannel is that it changes the entire dynamic. It's not about me, presenter, speaking at you, audience. It's about all of us learning together. My job isn't to be a high-and-mighty expert with all the answers. My job is to spark interest, facilitate conversation, and connect the dots. The backchannel not only democratizes the actual talk, acknowledging the expertise and interest you bring, but it also extends our reach and starts bigger conversations.

Recent example: I was giving a virtual presentation on Totally Rocking Your Drupal Development Environment. The backchannel let me quickly poll people and collect their questions and tips.

Another example: I was on the Generation Y panel at the City of Toronto Web 2.0 Summit. The venue had WiFi, so I checked out the Twitter backchannel on my iPod Touch. Thanks to Twitter, I could tell that people were dissatisfied with the slow and moderated online questions process, skeptical of the event and the speakers, and interested in engaging further. I announced that I'd be watching the Twitter backchannel, and during our panel, I kept an eye on the questions and comments that flowed past. That let me shape what I said to incorporate other people's perspectives and points of view, and that totally rocked.

And next time, I may even have Twitter breaks. ;) And I may put up a sign directing people to sit on the left side or the right side depending on whether they want to engage in the backchannel, so that others who are easily distracted by the clackety-clack of fingers on a keyboard can cluster together. I don't think I can arrange for beanbags in the front for bloggers, though - that requires more planning than most of my talks have. ;)

Go ahead. Make my day! =) Next time you're in one of my session, join the conversation. We'll all learn so much more if you do.

"So, who's your mentor? Who's on the hook for you?" asked my manager during our one-on-one session. He had been reading my posts about presentations and meetings, and he wanted to know what--or who--could help me take it to the next level. I was very good at sharing my enthusiasm and technical knowledge with others. If I could figure out how to communicate with managers and executives, I can do even more.

I told him that I still get nervous in small meetings and I still let my enthusiasm run away with me, and that I'd like to learn how to talk to different perspectives, personalities, and learning styles. I also shared how I'd been thinking about getting a presentation or speaking coach. I enjoy giving presentations and it seems I can create a lot of value with them, so it makes sense to learn how to do them really, really well. I'm particularly interested in learning how to do remote presentations and small in-person meetings well. Remote presentations and video will give me much more reach, and small in-person meetings are similar to the kind of work we do in consulting.

After our meeting, I thought about what could help me get even better at communicating in both large presentations and small meetings.

I'd been to Toastmasters in the past, and I had completed the ten-speech introductory program that earned me the Competent Communicator designation. I appreciated the structure of each meeting and the clear objectives for each speech, and the contests and international conventions were great places to see good speakers. In my weekly Toastmasters meeting with a downtown club, though, I found myself wanting more. I needed:

feedback that focused on deeper skills, not just delivery techniques,

inspiring role models who could deliver effective interactive presentations remotely as well as in person, and

insight on structuring longer talks or remote talks to keep people engaged and to build on interaction.

Presentation skills: content, organization, and delivery

Many public speaking courses focus on the mechanics of delivery. There's certainly a lot of value in polishing technique: eliminating "ums" and "ahs"; learning how to use pauses, body language, and props; using rhetorical structures and dynamic voice. If you want to improve your delivery and gain confidence, Toastmasters is a good way to do it.

I'm pretty happy with the way I deliver presentations. I can improve my delivery in small-group meetings, but that's probably a matter of practice. I'm a good presenter, regularly receiving high ratings. Although my current toolkit of delivery techniques don't cover all situations, I do pretty well.

What would make a real difference, however, is getting _really_ good at content and organization. Based on my Toastmasters experience, I think it and other public speaking resources are great at teaching delivery, but don't go into as much depth when it comes to content and organization.

There's no shortcut to developing good content. I need experience, and I need to learn as much as I can from other people. I'm doing several things to increase my chances of stumbling across good content:

I read a ton of books and blogs, looking for insights and stories. This gives me raw material for talks and helps me draw connections between topics.

I ask and answer lots of questions, learning a lot in the process. This gives me a sense of what people are interested in and learning more about, and I learn about their perspectives too.

I constantly test ideas by posting them on my blog, volunteering to give presentations, and creating other material. This gives me feedback on what people want to learn more about and what I can teach them, helps me improve my communication skills, and grows my network (often leading to other speaking opportunities). Over time, ideas grow from mindmaps to blog posts to articles to presentations to related ideas.

Good content is good, but good content combined with good organization is memorable and effective. This is where illustrations, mnemonics, alliteration, storytelling, and other structures come in handy. If I can learn how to get really good at organizing ideas, I'll be able to apply that skill to writing, speaking, and other things I do. Here's what I'm doing to learn more about organizing content:

Amy Shuen inspired me to prepare a spreadsheet for estimating the value created by my talks. (You can open the spreadsheet in OpenOffice.org or Lotus Symphony, both free office suites.) She'll be including some of the numbers in tomorrow's IBM Web 2.0 for Business community call on ROI of Web 2.0 at Work. I thought I'd make the numbers a little easier to grasp, so I spent an hour and a half making this: